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Month: December 2018

Published on

By yassineaourid

I hate goodbyes, really! And I hate thinking that this will be my last blog for this semester. I have experienced an amazing time here at GWU and in Washington D.C. in general. I had some great opportunities, got to know a lot of amazing people, improved my skills... I started to get used to this new way of life. Going to class early in the morning, eating those Chick-Fil-A sandwiches at lunch, running around the mall during the weekend,  drinking the morning Latte at Starbucks downstairs, going to Wholefoods to buy groceries, installing all the must-have apps (Netflix, Uber, Lyft, Lime, Venmo...), buying a Canada Goose (No just kidding), going back to my wonderful room on E Street. The location is really awesome and the address rocks! 1959 E Street what an address! It could be my password in the next years :p

I loved meeting people here at GWU. The people I met this semester were all speaking at least three languages, having some insane intellectual skills and very friendly and kind. I had great roommates and we had really fun at our weekly parties. The American experience was so rich that I will probably miss some important amazing episodes.  Do you know this feeling when you have so much to say but your head is empty? In four months, I was able to make two apps, one of them will be useful for International Affair students. It's an efficient news app that gets articles from all over the world. I learned how to play Golf and acquired some of the basics of Yoga.

In a nutshell, I had a really good time at The George Washington University, the Exchange program assistants were very nice. The staff was very professional, I have a special thought for the mailing and packaging services agents who helped me get my Amazon Prime packages this semester, and of course, my awesome professors with whom I really felt the pleasure of learning. I can't wait to visit Foggy Bottom again.

Thank you for having followed my blogs this semester, I hope it was entertaining and fun.

 

"The harder the conflict, the greater the triumph"                                                                                                                                                               George Washington 

 

Published on

By angusmack101

This'll be my last blog for the semester. Thanks to everyone who's been reading them; it's a small piece of validation, but I get a kick out of it—and it's definitely influenced me to do interesting things since I got to GW. That said, this hasn't been the most outlandish week.

It's more-or-less the same no matter what university you're at: finals are a pain, nobody likes them, and you either rise to the occasion and knock them out effectively or you get swallowed up by the system and crash & burn. So far I've handed in two major assignments without a hitch and I'm leaning heavily on the last two. However, there has been a small problem.

image1 - error

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

For those not familiar with the world of file recovery software, that screengrab represents the loss of my entire final video project. An automatic Windows 'drive repair' killed the entire thing, presumably because it doesn't like files formatted for use on Macs. Not a happy day for me, but thankfully I should be able to salvage a passing grade out of the class after some talking to my professor. I'm not actually that devastated, my grades here aren't going on my GPA, so the loss is more isolated to the project itself than anything else. I can go home satisfied that I did learn something valuable from the class as well as receive a lesson in the importance of file backups at a time where I can afford to get it. If I believed in fate, this would be an example of it at work.

Just be grateful it wasn't you, kids. Learn from my mistake.

Aside from that it's been mostly business as usual. Some alternating low-&-highkey social evenings — including one final party with some friends at American — and a lot of writing. My other creative final turned out pretty well; I managed to build an interactive website documenting the film Inglorious Basterds. I'd host it to show it off for anyone interested, but that costs money I can't afford to spend. Enjoy this nice jpg instead.

image2 - site

There's more to it than this, I promise.

I highly recommend the course for anyone interested. Interactive Web Design, it says a lot that despite taking 4.5 hours from 8 a.m. every Friday morning, it was still one of my favorites. If you're looking for a creative and problem-solving outlet, web design is a fun skill to pick up. It's also fun to learn how the internet actually works, and you can leave with a marketable skill with unlimited potential to develop it for whatever purpose you so desire.

Once again thank you to everyone who's been reading my content these last four months. I'll be touring the country til mid-January before I have to head home and start another year in Melbourne, and I'll definitely look back fondly on everything I've experienced at GW. If the economy doesn't kill me first I'll probably get a buzz out of rereading all these rants in a few decades — hopefully as a much better writer and having done many more things like it.

Published on

By angusmack101

The final week of classes is upon us. There's no more need to guess about when assignments are due or what they'll involve—it's all on the table. In a week and a half my semester here will be complete, and I'll have to actually start planning my end-of-year travel plans. It's not gonna be cheap.

This week was fun, though. The Bernie Sanders talk I've been waiting a month for was excellent. It was definitely more of what we've come to expect from him after a few years of relatively high exposure. He did go into a bit more depth about the 2016 campaign, which was a welcome change. It wasn't hard to imagine why he didn't leave his house the day after the election.

01 - bernie crowd

You can google a better picture of Bernie than I could ever take. Here's one of the crowd.

I also went on what will likely be my final TRAiLS trip this semester. We drove to an indoor pool in Maryland for a charity 'Scuba Santa' event where we got to swim around in scuba gear and take a picture with the big guy. It was a good time, as I've come to expect with TRAiLS, but the actual scuba stuff was mostly overshadowed by the comedy of watching people flail off a 5 meter diving board. We had a good couple of hours in before the pool manager kicked us off the board and out of the hot tub, and we were happy to wrap it all up at a local Italian joint and get back by late afternoon.

02 - scubasanta

Props to this guy for spending four hours underwater in a fake beard

Aside from that it's been mostly study and preparation for finals. Not as glamorous as I'd like, but definitely a necessary evil. Hopefully I can squeeze a few more memorable moments into my last few weeks.

Published on

By yassineaourid

This week was particularly amazing since I decided to dedicate more time attending events. There are plenty of events every day in GWU, it's insane! The number of events I see on Facebook is incredible. There are events for everyone and a variety of themes are present. This week I was interested in three major events.  Two of them are related to my major (Computer Science) and the other one was more cultural.

The first event I attended was about Machine Learning. It was a sort of introduction to this huge field of Comp. Sci. The speaker was implausibly a sophomore student. I swear he spoke better than any Ph.D. I have met in my life. I would take him as a professor. A sophomore!! This is something I noticed about American students. They get involved in an early age in topics they are interested in, and they put a lot of effort into what they like. I was also surprised by the questions asked by the other students who attended. I felt like I was in a high tech conference. The second event also related to Computer Science was about compilers. I will spare you the details, although it is a fascinating topic.

I met a student who is going to my university next semester as an exchange student. So I got to know her from now. She invited me to an event of the association that she represents on campus. It was a Multi-Faith Dinner where three representatives of the three monotheist religions were gathered and were talking about the Holy City, Jerusalem. We had a discussion afterward and it was very interesting.

I can't believe we are already in December, I feel like June was last week. Only one week of class left, who would believe it? I will miss several people here, especially my friend Alexandre who works at Subway downstairs. He makes some pretty decent sandwiches

Next week will be more active! Stay tuned and enjoy this beautiful picture taken in Kogan Plaza by my friend Manuel Fazioli

 

 

 

 

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